Bon voyage-y

I am writing this at Heathrow Airport whilst waiting for my flight to Beijing to attend the 2012 FIAF Congress. It is annual event for the global community of moving film archives, and this year it also hosts a symposium on the subject of archiving animation - which is why I get to go.
On Monday morning I will be giving a paper about the Halas & Batchelor Collection, but rather than talk about that again I would like to share some questions that form the start of my talk. Questions that I certainly don't answer in the rest of it.
The fundamental one is: why has a history of British animation never been written in its over 100 year history? Clare Kitson gives a great overview in the first part of her Channel 4 Factor book. Going further back Elaine Burrow wrote an excellent summary in the 1985 book "All Our Yesterdays". But these chapters whet the appetite rather than sate it
- Why has no-one heard of Anson Dyer's 36 year career as a founding father of British animation?
- Why is the influential work of the Larkins Studio and Peter Sachs not widely celebrated? Why are their films not properly preserved and available?
- Why is there not a published study of the films of Bob Godfrey?
There are too many questions like this, and I ask them largely rhetorically as I am sure that some have tried to answer them. But when publishers are unlikely to invest in such endeavours then it takes a masochist or a messiah to take such tasks on.
Hopefully this will change, and I think the answers lie in making the films available and getting people to see them with some context - not easy tasks even within the animation community, let alone beyond.
The thing I am looking forward to mostly from the symposium is hearing the situation in other countries. Are we worse off in Britain and if so what might the factors in this be. One of the questions I ask in my talk is whether as an English speaking country then we are affected more by the American domination of the medium? Like I say no answers here for the moment, and I have a plane to catch.
I hope to write up some thoughts about the talks and discussions while I am out there, but I have to do it by emailing my blog via a Blackberry so excuse the formatting.
Bon voyage-y
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